Staff Reporter

Go Mobile managing director Iain Humphrey axed six under-performing stores following the departures of former Go Mobile chief Les Bennett and sales director Nil Naik to set up Mint Mobile in March.

The new stores in Driffield and Ripon are the latest in a series of eight store openings since Humphrey the founder of Go Mobile seized control of the retail chain.

Humphrey said:

Motivation was very low among staff within the company before we re-organised the team.

The number of stores came down to just 17. As some stores leases came up for renewal we chose to close them because they werent performing as they should have been.

After Les [Bennett] and Nil [Naik] left the morale within the company turned around.

The two new stores take us up to 25 in total. We have also employed a full-time refitting team so we have refurbished all the stores in England and removed all the network-related material.

Handsets drive sales among consumers and we have our own in-house team which has designed all the point-of-sale material around that.

He added: We will consolidate during the period up to Christmas get through January and February next year and then look to expand further.

Shebang Distribution the independent distribution arm of Humphreys Daventry business recently won a contract to supply JAG Communications. Humphrey installed Sellfone 3G Shebangs automated stock replenishment system in all 76 of JAGs stores over the summer.

Joseph Crowe (24) is charged with stealing mobile phones from two passengers on a train in June.

In another case two London men were accused of violently robbing a man of his Nokia in Bayswater West London.

Mohammed Ridha (20) was remanded in custody at the Middlesex Huildhall Crown Court.

He and a 16-year-old boy who cannot be named for legal reasons are charged with robbing Youssef Alazema last November subjecting him to force.

Vodafone is set to receive reprimand from the ASA over its Best in Britain bar none and Best in London bar none non-broadcast advertising campaigns.

The advertising watchdog has drafted a recommended course of action but not yet formerly sent out an adjudication on the matter.

O2 made the complaint objecting to Vodafones claim in the advertisement that it had the best call success rate in the country.

A source close to O2 said that the carrier thought the campaign did not acknowledge other performance metrics such as customer service. O2 also objected to the size of the small print on the advertisements which it said was not prominent enough.

According to the source the ASA has indicated that it is likely the complaint will be upheld.

Vodafone has refused to comment on the investigation.

Meanwhile Orange has been rapped by the ASA for misleading text contained within its Double talk double text promotional activity.

The network ran TV press and Internet promotions headlined: Now all customers old and new can get double minutes and double texts for six months on Your Plan 120 200 or 300.

The ASA received 28 complaints criticising the ads for being misleading because they did not make it clear that existing customers must complete a certain number of months of their contract and must agree to sign up to a further contract to take advantage of the offers.

After the complaints were raised with Orange the network changed the wording in its ads but the ASA still considered the ads misleading.

An Orange spokesman confirmed the campaign had ended.

In the campaign which was shot in Hong Kong music has become illegal something that ladies who lunch can only enjoy behind closed doors. They gather in groups during the day pop the lids on their sonic canisters and enjoy.

However the sound police are never far away. They burst in with their oversized orange earmuffs and sound proof bags impound the canisters and take the women away but even the Police cant resist the allure of music.

Bob Fuller 3s chief executive reckons like 3s other ads in the series Dirty Music will get people talking. Music is an important part of peoples leisure time with 3G technology our customers can enjoy full-length music videos and tracks on their mobile something consumers would never have imagined possible a few years ago he said.

A through-the-line multi-media campaign will support the brand film to promote 3s music offering of tracks and full-length videos from major artists and record labels including Robbie Williams Britney Spears Kylie and the best indie bands.

The portal described by Airphone Distribution sales director Rob Whellams as the worlds largest cookbook is set to go live on Monday offering 6000 recipes from the countrys top chefs.

Access to the portal will be free. Recipes cost 50p each or 1.50 for a video download showing how to prepare the dish step by step.

UKTV will be promoting the service at the end of each days Great Food Live programme by encouraging viewers to text the name of an ingredient to the portal to receive a recipe based on the ingredient.

Airphone Distribution operations director Mark Watts claimed the deal was a major coup. UKTV Food has 7.2 million subscribers and as long as they have a WAP-enabled phone this will be open to all of them. Both Vodafone and Orange have expressed an interest in putting this into their menus.

Whellams added that plans were in the pipeline to launch other content portals on popular lifestyle topics such as music fashion gaming motoring and DIY.

The network has been widely promoting the scheme which enables consumers to use their home tariffs abroad with a huge marketing push and television advertising campaign.

Those ads could now take a more business slant with the introduction of Vodafone Passport on all Perfect Fit for Business tariffs. The free service means a business person can use their mobile abroad and only pay their UK rate plus a one-off 75p connection fee to make a call. The potential savings are substantial. For instance a call from Spain previously cost 3.75 under normal Vodafone World rates.

The scheme follows other services the network has introduced for customers to use when overseas including a Vodafone data tariff for 3G mobile connect card users abroad.

Mark Bond director of enterprise marketing at Vodafone UK explained that there was a business customer demand for using mobile abroad as if they were back in the UK and not worry about bill shock when they returned.

We understand that being in touch 24/7 with colleagues having a good value tariff and a clear idea of call costs is of critical importance to all businesses whether at home or abroad. Vodafone Passport will help business travellers to accomplish this and for any business with a subsidiary in a Vodafone Passport country there is outstanding value to be gained.

Vodafone Passport is available in Albania Australia Germany Greece Hungary Republic of Ireland Italy Japan Malta The Netherlands New Zealand Portugal Spain and Sweden. It is also available in France and Monaco on the SFR network in Switzerland on Swisscom and in Belgium on Proximus.

Sales assistant Susan Mokogwu (21) was instead sentenced to 200 hours of unpaid community service work and ordered to pay O2 compensation of 4849.77. She was saved from prison by favourable probation reports having earlier been told she could be jailed for the offences.

Mokogwu who worked at O2 s Oxford Street store was arrested on July 5 after stock discrepancies were found and police summoned. Her haul of 18 Nokia handsets some Bluetooth headsets and thousands of pounds of top-up vouchers has not been recovered.

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead was besieged by telesales callers.

The situation was so serious that a staff nurse notified hospital management who then contacted T-Mobile to complain.

T-Mobile distributed a stern email to its entire dealer and distributor base demanding such activity cease.

The email by T-Mobile channel communications executive Tim de Winter said: Calls are being received in many departments (consulting rooms emergency departments etc) are causing considerable disruption and concern and could potentially put lives at risk Please ensure all dealers stockists sales staff and call centres are aware particularly Indian call centres as these calls appear to originate from outside the UK.

The hospital said the cold calling had caused disruption but was pleased T-Mobile had acted to resolve the matter.

It was inconvenient for a short time but we were pleased with the speedy response said the hospital.

The news that third parties will also be able to market the tariff will calm growing dealer concern that they would be offered exclusively on 3s website.

A 3 spokeswoman said: These online tariffs have been developed specifically to meet what the type of tariff a person who purchases a handset online is looking for and we think they will be very popular.

The tariffs are available via three.co.uk but we are also allowing third party access which means that should a customer wish to they can sign up to these tariffs in the normal channels.

3s new online tariffs for customers who buy directly from its website. The new price plans Online 675 (75 minutes and 600 texts for 20 a month) Online 950 (150 minutes 750 texts and 25 video minutes and 25 photo/video messages for 25) and Online 1400 (300 minutes 1000 texts 50 video minutes 50 photo/video messages and 5 inclusive downloads for 30 a month) became available on September 1.

3 dealer and Mobile News columnist Jez Harris said it was good news that dealers werent being cut out of the loop. Id heard that 3 were going to be offering these online deals exclusively to direct customers he said.

Now Ive heard from my distributor [Hugh Symons] that 3 are going to give us third party access. I havent seen the commercials yet but as I understand the margins are very very small.

However historically networks offer direct deals that we cant have a hope in hell of matching so its good news that even with a small margin 3 are allowing us to offer these tariffs.

Wed make a lot more commission by getting a customer one of 3s other price plans but at least this way if a customer comes in and asks about these tariffs we can sell it as opposed to saying sorry no chance.

Two other tariffs were also available from September. The first Video Talk and Text 350 gives punters 200 minutes 100 texts 25 video minutes 25 video/picture messages for 25 a month. Meanwhile Video Talk and Text 1300 gives punters 1000 minutes 150 texts 50 video minutes 50 video/picture messages for 60 a month.

He said: In the last few months a number of players have not given the consumer the best value for money and there has been a lot of bad press about content providers that have failed to put the customer first. Some have duped customers into signing up for things that they dont want.

Commenting on the latest half-year figures Higginson said that Monstermobs UK subscriber base had stalled at around 400000 in the first half of 2005 as its strategy switched to customer retention and away from advertising. However the company hopes to take advantage of a real music download service in the run up to Christmas.

He said: Our focus has been to improve content and the consumer experience to the benefit of subscriber retention. There has been some regulatory uncertainty in the market and these factors together have informed our cautious approach to marketing spend particularly in print media. Therefore subscriber numbers have remained at around 400000.

Monstermob reported strong trading across all territories for the six months to June 30. EBITDA was 4.1 million on net revenues of 14.1m for the period with 3.1 million net cash inflow from operations. Among the highlights for the period was a four-fold increase in its US business and the acquisition of businesses in the Philippines Malaysia and China.